1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic camera capable of implementing folder management of filed photographic information related to electronically photographed images and a file management method adopted in folder management.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are electronic cameras in the related art that achieve functions of erasing an image data file obtained through a photographing operation and prohibiting the erasure of such an image data file (see, for instance, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. H06-314176 and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. H 10-285517).
FIG. 19 illustrates image data files stored in a recording medium of an electronic camera and a method of specifying an image data file to be locked in the related art. The method adopted to prohibit erasure of image data files in the related art is now explained in reference to this figure. Image data files obtained through photographing operations are assigned with filenames 0001, 0002, 0003, . . . in the order in which they are obtained and are stored into an ordinary folder DSC01 created in a recording medium such as a flash memory. In each image data file, information such as the attributes and the recording date is also recorded. In order to ensure that these image data files are not erased by mistake, a lock flag is set for an image data file for which erasure is to be prohibited, as shown in the figure, for instance, and thus, any file at which the lock flag is set is not erased in the image erasure mode.
However, there are locked files, i.e., erase-prohibited files and ordinary files coexisting in an ordinary folder in the electronic camera in the related art. For this reason, the locked files among numerous image data files must be verified through a complicated and time-consuming process, resulting in poor operability.